goofballs

14 February, 2014

I love my grandmother, my father's mother, who died more than two decades ago.

She had a file of cards on which she wrote so many terrifying recipes involving awful post-Depression and World War II era processed foods, which my step mother lovingly transcribed posthumously in a binder entitled "Meals With Mildred."

Her first husband, a contrite former strike breaker cum labor activist, was murdered. Her second husband, my grandfather, a trucker cum shipping executive, was active in the labor movement as well.

She loathed Ronald Reagan almost as much as she loathed Satan himself.

She was a Southern gal, and she had many "black friends." And I do believe she did.

Her home in Akron was one of the first test markets for a service we called "cable" (prior to what we now call it, "broadband"). My first exposure to MTV was on her green couch in her modest Akron living room with it's brown carpet. Brown and green and orange, the swatch of ugly 1960s midwestern homes.

My first video: "Hurts So Good" by not John Mellancamp, not John Cougar-Mellancamp, but John Cougar. My second? "Don't Fear the Reaper."

I will always love her mostly for inadvertently steering me away from religion.

She would donate money to a ridiculous huckster called Earnest Angley.

She would hip me to incongruous facts like "some people go to Hell, but children never go to Hell because children are innocent in the eyes of God."

I knew better, having been a child at the time and knowing how cruel children could be - how could God forgive all children when some children could be so evil?

"But the races shouldn't mix," grandma Mildred would continue with all the seriousness of a funeral, "God cannot love the child of a black person and a white person."

At that time I wasn't fully aware that most black people in America were in fact very likely the product of some miscegenation, but I was aware of the conflict between "God loves all children" (which I already had some reservations about) and "God hates mulattos."

Of course I politely inquired more about this "God" person with her, and I even entertained the idea of religion.

Grandma took me to her church, of course, because she worried so about the eternal soul of her grandchildren (who God supposedly loved so much that, as long as I was of pure breed, would not go to Hell).

And so I went to church, and there I solidified at an early age my atheism.

So thank you, grandma. I wish you were in Heaven and could see my words. But you aren't. You're dead and you've been dead for a long time, and the only thing left of you is our memories and your recipes for ambrosia salad featuring candied fruit.

This message was inspired by a Ford commercial that Hulu forced me to watch featuring a clearly bi-racial actor. God might forgive him, but I have my reservations about him shilling for Henry's racist car company.

22 January, 2014

The first time I saw her, after nearly 16 or 17 years had elapsed, she was noticeably thinner than she was in high school. But she was also stylish, in a way I didn't recall her being as a teenager. There was an anxious confidence in her. She talked in stuccato, gesticulating sharply.

We dined on bacon and eggs and talked about LA and TV and the Scientologists across the street, in their color coded collared short sleeves filing out of their Scientology busses as the Scientology private police force circled the big blue building on bicycles.

We walked to her house, passing a vitamin store (a Scientology front, but I was just as fascinated to hear the dirt as she was to dish it). She offered, smiling, "did you know my maid is a Scientologist?"

We passed a Spanish-Mexican church. This was unglamorous West Hollywood, where staff writers and upstarts scrape by. Of course Emily was also on SSI, for her problems.

I browsed her selection of books - novelized fiction from popular Sci-Fi. She showed me her picket sign from the 2005 Writer's Strike... it was signed by Carter Bays and several others (someone called Seth McFarlane?). How I wish I could touch that sign once, to smell it, to see if it gave off any spark of who she was, just to be in her presence once again.

Later she wasn't quite so... manic. We had coffee in Oakland. We made plans, we talked about big projects.

The last time I communicated with her at all was November of 2012. We'd really get together soon! Promise!

Her heart stopped one year ago today, and mine hasn't been the same ever since.

28 July, 2013

She said she was the penultimate, and then explained that she meant she would be the last before I settled down.

I told her that I was not sure I'd ever settle down and that I was glad to have her as a member of my "elite tribe", and that I hope they would be kind to me in their remembrances should they out last me.

She called me goth-y. I quoted Elliott Smith. My mind wandered, thinking about other women. A world without jealousy expanded in my mind, but it always turned sour. Conflicts arose and slowly poisoned Utopia. In my dreams, as in my real life, I found myself managing others' emotions and juggling their expectations.

This is why we can't have nice things,...

I wonder if my Dad steered me toward "A Stranger in a Strange Land" in my precocious, fumbling youth to convey something about my congenital wandering eye and love of lust. He was transitioning to the arms of another. Perhaps he wanted me to grok this.

I have yet to grok it fully, relative to his life or mine. His first marriage is still a bone of contention, but I do not carry ill will to any of the members of my tribe, even the ones who deserve it (you know who you are... especially you, KW).

I try to spend less time resenting. I must not think bad thoughts.

--

I shall soon discuss elsewhere how I lost a contest where I put in hundreds of dollars and hours of labor, as did my also-rans, losing to someone who rolled up cheese in sausage and wrapped it all in bacon for pennies to my dollar, seconds to my hour.

I guess you still can't beat cheese stuffed, bacon wrapped.

It was a tony affair, a proper affair with ladies and gentlemen and dick jokes and boozy ice cream drinks and lots of whiskey, public displays of affection and even more public displays of gross gluttony.

There was bacon deep fried in bacon fat, as it should be.

There were ex lovers and also-rans.

There was a pig face mask. Fuck it up, pig face. Fuck it up.

It marked the halfway mark in a year of kept promises: be with your friends, don't hold grudges, don't harbor regrets, take care of yourself but have fun. Don't presume, don't take for granted.

In the last few years I've lost too many.

I forgot what else I was going to say. Now it's time to soak in a hot bath and to go be with friends, and maybe find a way to say "I love you" without it being too sentimental by half.

17 March, 2013

the premise of the story is vignettes of what people are doing the exact moment your heart stopped. starting with your neighbors, then random people in oakland. maybe a few of the many people around the world you knew, that very moment. some stories are longer, some short - then we go to a montage. then finally to your poor bewildered dog, licking your hand.

Now I lay it with care across my chair, over top my guitar cases, so that if I manage to bring myself to leave the house any time soon I can get my dress jacket and shirts dry cleaned for your memorial.

That will be two weddings, two funerals. I wish I could erase the death by dousing it in gasoline and setting it on fire.

Your size was the only small thing about you.

I'll never forget sneaking out of the dorms for study hours and you being a fixture misfit in the computer lab most nights - all of us forming a ragtag tribe of proto-geeks. What was it you were always typing? I never knew until later the depths and breadth of your wondrous creativity - only that your joy was infectious and your curiosity boundless and that you had a hilarious sense of humor.

Later, I was touched to see how brave you were in the face of all the struggling and suffering you endured in your short life. I am awed at how many lives you did manage to touch, but not surprised.

09 January, 2013

Well, certainly not with me. But you have made your bed, and there you shall sleep.

It's a thing with you, it's a pattern.

I mean, you tell me - you say, "oh I can't date an alcoholic," so it never quite worked out with Mischa. But then you turn around and poach Jake from Lauren. Drunk Jake, that's his nickname for fucks sake. Don't tell me they were broken up - it's more complicated than that. That's cover, you're justifying it to yourself. Its a lie you tell yourself and you believe it so well you actually had the gumption to get indignant TO ME when I suggested that maybe he didn't tell you exactly the truth about that.

You talk about love, true love, sweep you off your feet romance, as if you have any idea what it means, or would recognize it if it lived with you for three years in Chelsea. Yeah, I went there.

Remember when you left Ron for Patterson, and I was like, what the fuck? Did that wedding and all that mean more to me? I mean, were you really done, you and Ron, or are you the cheater you so revile? And a military man? You picked a state-sponsored killer over the sweet, sensitive artist/scientist. Did being treated well bore you?

I mean, here's a guy who goes all over the world and confirms every stereo type of the gun-toting foreign service thug that so many have about American "State Department" black-helicopter types right down to the dozens of bastard children and proclivity for whores. You are lucky the worst you got from that was a case of the clap.

You're damn lucky he didn't get tired of your ass and leave your corpse in some jungle, frankly. And even then you had again the audacity to get mad a ME when I told you I thought this guy was all wrong, all wrong for you.

So, no, that doesn't make me eager to shift around my social obligations, which are hard enough -- you know how I am and the difficulties I have -- so that I can slot you in without exposing you to the dozen or so people who you've pissed off with your current relationship status.

As for Mischa. I get it, he's a drunk too. But he's honest, and he cares, and he probably would have treated you like a queen. You remember we talked about his girl trouble, the issue with Valerie getting too close. You couldn't grasp it: how dare a boy reject the advances of a women, and at the same time bed her? But that's the deal they had, and it was straight-forward: no twists or turns or intrigue about it. She chose to break the rules and he had to distance himself - for both their good.

He's an honest broker, he's not going to lie and tell you what you want to hear, but you always choose what you want to hear over what you need to hear. Don't you?

You have so much tunnel vision that you can't see what's going on around you. I don't want you to be hurt by Drunk Jake but he has a pattern just like every one else and you'll get caught in it and spit out of it and then come to cry on my shoulder about it (and it's there, promise, but not without a long talk and a long hard look at why this keeps happening).

10 November, 2012

You see some hardass motherfucker coming down the street, that guy will give it up in less than an hour.

I've stared down the hardest, bad-est killers and thugs on the planet. Tough mothers, hard headed and scarred. Tattooed up, cut up, calloused thugs that would cut your throat open if they could.

But not a single one of those shit heads ever gets out of the box without giving up their best friend, their mom and Jesus Christ Himself, if He worked the job with them, did the dirty.

Those cocksuckers don't scare me.

Kids.

They scare the shit out of me.

Kids ain't got no sense, no idea about consequences, no reasons not to spit in your fucken eye and tell you to go fuck yourself.

You can't get in their heads, cuz there ain't nothing there.

I don't mean all kids.. of course you can scare the shit out of some punk from the suburbs, some mommy or daddy's kid that fucked up, got caught up in some shit they didn't plan on. That's like stealing candy from a baby. Literally.

But there are some kids that just don't have no fucken "give a fuck".

Got to have the perp give a fuck about something and dangle that shit in their face hour after hour, shit, I'm getting paid. They're chained to the table and I'd getting overtime. I got all the time I need to turn most scumbags into a plea deal, 'cept those fucken whack ass kids who truly do not give a fuck.

You ever been mugged?

No?

Here's how it goes: some fuck will come at you, maybe with a gun, maybe a "gun", some bullshit in their pocket that ain't a gun, maybe a knife.

Every cop on the planet will put 99% of them fucks in their place before they get word one out. Muggers are lazy cowards, and you look them right in the eye when they have a gun pointed at you and you say "fuck you."

They don't know what to do with that. They run away. Muggers are like sharks, punch 'em in the nose and they pussy out, find some other mark.

But these psycho ass kids... man... shit.

This one kid, I'll never forget it.

Killed his mom. He dad was long in the wind. Killed his sister. Basically cut her fucking head off. Covered in blood when we brought his ass in.

He just laughed at us and drank soda.

But he had this empty, wild look. I will never forget it. Seen it again and again in young bucks who just do not give a fuck. Go to juvee and cut off the other inmates ears for fun.

God forbid they get out, they turn into the kind of cold killer you are lucky to get a clean shot on, no matter how much paperwork, because they are fucking feral.

Don't worry about some tough coming at you, because the laws of science and reason still work on someone who bothers to live long enough in these parts to get long in the tooth, but don't mess with the kids. They shoot first and think never.

US Representative District 12:

I'll be voting for Nancy Pelosi.

John Dennis seems like an earnest enough guy, but the first thing I see on his webpage is a plea to "End the Fed." The Federal Reserve is vilified and misunderstood. Whenever I see a plea to end it, I know that there are other dog whistles a-blowing in the wind:

Dramatically cut federal spending immediately. Savings could be
realized by abolishing the Departments of Education, Commerce and
Agriculture and reorganizing the Department of Homeland Security. Budget
savings for these changes would be approximately $300 billion.

Abolish
capital gains taxes for at least 10 years, if not permanently. This
will attract the necessary offshore capital to start businesses and
create productive jobs.

Drastically cut, with an eye toward ending, the income tax. This puts real buying power back into the hands of the consumer.

Nice try, Libertarian!

State Assembly, District 17:

I report, you decide. State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano proposed a bill that would bar law enforcement from cooperating with Federal Immigration holds for non-violent offenders; this is considered a justice issue in the immigrant community, as ICE holds often lead to summary deportations, render asunder families and is a cog in our unjust and cruel immigration policy - one that is arguably racist.

On the other hand, Governor Brown (not at all the hippy-dippy cartoon from the 1980s) vetoed the bill, with lots of cheer-leading from those opposed to immigration reform or in favor of stricter enforcement of immigration (presumably targeting Latinos).

Whatever Clark's motivation, he has some unfortunate company, and Ammiano's bill, while characterized as flawed by opponents, was lobbied and offered up as humanitarian relief against an increasingly militarized ICE.

I tend to side with Ammiano, and for Clark to call Ammiano out as out-of-touch with "California voters" is a dog-whistle. I think Clark is on the wrong side of the debate, acknowledging that he has at least put together a coherent and un-shrill argument in favor of siding with the Governor on AB1081's defeat:

Most Californians will not be significantly effected either way unless they have a personal stake in immigration policy, a growing and plural minority who will have an increasing influence on local politics in years to come.

I will stick with the incumbent, SA Ammiano, however I urge you to vote your conscience.

BART Director, District 9:

Of the much maligned local public transportation systems, BART trails behind MUNI as most hated (although a close call against Caltrain, which IMO has shown improvement since the switch over this summer).

Sam Rodriguez: Parent and policy wonk/operative/etc with a lot of high-gloss endorsements (including with Lt. Gov Gavin Newsom). Do not see any radical or revolutionary (eg, game-changing) proposals.

Gladys Soto: Parent of public school student. Focus on outreach to Latino community. Emphasis on early education (K-3). Pro- "Restorative Practice", which educates children throughout disciplinary and administrative actions. Endorsements: Campos, Leno, Fewer.

Rafael Mandelman: Local government attorney. Holds degrees from Yale, Harvard and Berkeley. Worked with various locally known and loved non-profits and commissions. Endorsements include Ammiano, Assesor Ting, Treasurer Cisneros and Sup. Avalos.

George Vazhappally: SBO. Actually, it says "Small Businessman". Don't know if that means he, as a man, is small, or his business is small. Or, like, small business, man. Enthusiastic use of all caps, the first seen so far in the city voter guide. Also, he is a successful businessman. He asks for your vote.

William L. Walker: Student Trustee, SF CC District. "It's time for a student to lead." Take your best shot, champ.

...And finally, the ballot measures (there a zillion of them, so we're going to just blast through them).

31 October, 2012

The good (Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi), the not-as-good (Barack Husein Obama) and the ugly (Diane Feinstein).

Diane Feinstein, for all her faults (and there are many) is the devil we know, same as the incumbent POTUS.
--

So let's deal with the 800-lbs gorilla in the room: Democrats acting like Republicans.

DiFi and Obama are both (the former enthusiastically and the latter more moderately) in the "blue dog" camp, which is a Democrat who is willing to court votes on the right, wants to appear business friendly and will often vote in spite of the will of the party constituency (or at least stated orthodoxy).

They are hawkish on defense and willing to play games with civil liberties (especially those pertaining to due process - looking at you, Mr. President); they can be coy or waffle regarding civil rights, especially marriage equality (though Senator Feinstein has always been pro- and POTUS has come around due perhaps in no small part to his disaffected base).

Finally in the past Blue Dogs have been not as enthusiastic supporters to the right for choice.

This has resulted in the passage of a number of laws, nationally and in state legislatures, that are obnoxious to anyone who cares about reproductive health (as organizations such as Planned Parenthood are in the crossfire of the culture wars) or a woman's right to choose.

Those Blue Dogs may not be willfully malicious, but theirs is in this and many other cases a sin of omission.

It is the Blue Dogs loyalty that Obama courted in his first months in office and throughout 2009 in order to pass the Health Care Bill, with all its blemishes, and the approval of the Blue Dog caucus (officially, the Democratic Leadership Caucus or DLC).

In the name of "bipartisanship" the DLC, Obama and the Blue Dogs have allowed the extreme right to run rough shod over legislatures on the state and local and national theatres, sometimes by malice but usually in the name of pragmatism.

--

On the right, or among the famously annoying undecided (eg, the audience for this post), there seems to be a lot of anxiety fomenting about the injustice of a two party system; hence the Tea Party and Libertarian resurgence.

These are the same people that confuse property with liberty and think that the right to have a gun is more important than the fact that I'd rather be alive than shot in the face, how's that for rights?

Not that gun control laws work. But the right has taken a bullshit reading of the 2nd Amendment and twisted it into an extreme ideology. I enjoy popping off a few rounds from a rifle as much as the next guy, but I'd rather dip my balls in fire ants than give 1¢ to the NRA, a organization dedicated to defending a single "right" over all others.

Pro gun or against gun, everyone should realize that since the NRA is so powerful, and that the candidates they support also support an extreme right-wing vision of the country. Supporting gun rights is practically akin to being anti-gay rights, anti-choice, pro-Dominionist, pro-Zionist and anti-union.

Support the NRA and you are buying the whole bill of sale.

Is the Democratic platform on guns wrong? Maybe in 1986, but it has evolved. Gun control has been abandoned because it's a poison pill with moderates (Americans who believe in the primacy of 2nd Amendment rights but may be open to socially liberal ideas or entitlement or fair taxation).

No, the ACLU forever gets my money, not the NRA, despite defending people whose ideologies I find deplorable, because at least they fight for real rights. Put that in your "well-organized militia and shove it", wingers.

--

Make no mistake, up is down, black is white and Libertarianism is the crypto-fascist authoritarian dreams of people who aren't satisfied with the chest pounding jingoism the GOP today embodies. If you need any more proof, see the welfare programs for corporations and the rich they want to embolden and strengthen (fascism) and the entitlement programs they would gut (class warfare, anti-poor, anti-middle class, Plutocratic) and the programs they have no interest in, or worse, a desire to raze like public infrastructure, education, "tort reform" (code for: immunity for corporate citizens and the very wealthy) and the like.

Libertarianism is a non-starter for me, and it should be for anyone who can think past "I got my own, screw you."

Unfortunately it has a certain faux intellectual appeal and has attracted many intelligent people into lockstep with the designs of people like the Koch brothers who do not have their best interests in mind.

I'll skip the extended discussion about self-taxation. I'm glad the Kochs pay for things like NOVA and the like, but I still think they need to contribute to birth control for at risk women and harm reduction for drug abusers, like it or not.

--

Ron Paul is a racist. I said it.

The race baiting of the right has been talked about exhaustively.

Gary Johnson is at least an honest broker of the above flawed Libertarianism. Paul is just a crypto-racist with a wing-nut following. Sorry.

The GOP is racist. I hear the dog whistles and you are fooling no one when you claim innocence. This whole issue of voter fraud has one goal: keep Democrats (blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the elderly) from voting.

It's Jim Crow, plain and simple. Shame on you.

Stop asking the leader of the free world for his papers. He's your president too, show some respect. No one asked for Bush's papers.

--

I'm voting for bomby-McDrone, yes I am, because the alternative is killy-McMormon, ready to pull the trigger at Israel's beckoning on Iran. Then we all die, and the Dominionists get the last laugh (except they don't, because they will all be dead too, and there is no heaven or hell: Imagine that!).

--

The skies have parted above central Oregon as I listen to Yousef Islam (né Cat Stephens) singing "I love everything, so don't it make you feel sad?".

The weather has been a bit drizzly in Oregon, as is seasonal.

On the East Coast it's been an apocalyptic shit-storm, literally, and it's only going to get worse as Climate Change drags on unabated.

Romney talks about disbanding and de-funding FEMA, and mocks the President's pledge to "slow the rise of the oceans."

Well, at least someone has pledged to try something, you and your God bothering party. I don't know what Romney really believes, if he believes in another other than himself and his magical underwear.

He shamelessly catered to Dominionists in the primaries, that vocal wing of the Republican Party that believes, quite literally, that God created everything for Man to have total dominion on. It's an Evangelical stance that has no room for climate science, or science at all, that forces women to have rape babies and that yearns for a reunited Israel, reformed in its original Biblical footprint, in order to bring about the Second Coming of Christ and the apocalypse.

These people are delusional and dangerous, no more advanced in their thinking about the world than the Taliban. They are the American Taliban, and they must be stopped.

I'm sitting in a hotel room now and on the TV there are back to back "ghost hunting" "reality" shows on Travel and SyFy. At least the latter is on a channel that at one time purported to be dedicated to fiction, which ghosts certainly are.

Click... click... "Bigfoot Hunters"... on the Science Channel? Discovery? History? "Sarah Palin's Alaska", "Hoarders", "True UFO History" and with a numbing coda of "COPS" and the like in case you didn't hate your fellow American enough ("this insane criminal was caught trying to flee the police, who he should have no reason to fear if he wasn't a bad, bad, drug using law breaker" rambles on John Walsh, who understandably lost his faith long ago).

These messages, they stick, they get into someplace deep within us, and they help us believe the lie that we aren't all in it together, that the next guy doesn't deserve the same breaks as I do, and that being lucky is a virtue of hard scrabble effort and not a combination of birthright, dumb luck, societal support, education, military hegemony and legacy.

You didn't built that. We did.

They say "there are no poor people in America, just temporarily embarrassed millionaires." And the chumps on reality TV. And ghosts. Ghosts everywhere, at least on the dial (pro-tip: in the olden days, dials were used to "tune" televisions to the dozen or so on-air channels), screaming incomprehensible banshee choruses at our faces ("FUCK IT, WE'LL DO IT LIVE!").

We have to turn the tide of the dumbification of America, and we need to fight ignorance with knowledge, fear with love and the Culture War with cultural progress.

--

Still undecided?

You
can take any position and pose them as binary choices (since they are).
Iran war or not? Choice or not? Gay rights or not? Tax cuts for the
rich or not? Austerity or not? Social security privatization or not?
There's really only one clear choice. I will Jill Stein all the luck in
the world, but she or Gary Johnson are not viable opponents to the
Romney machine.

I believe in science, fair taxation of the wealthy, gay rights, a woman's right to choose, standing up to Israeli foreign entanglements, ending wars not starting them, clean energy, equal pay, the right for laborers to organize and I'm against corporate personhood and I'm voting Democratic.

20 October, 2012

Prop 30 - Yes. The proposition asks the wealthiest Californians to invest in the state whose treasure they enjoy and whose economy enriches them.Prop 31 - Needs more study.SFBG says no, "gives governor too much power". Likes the idea of a 24 month budget, and some of the other proposals (more municipal control over funds), but does not like the bills complexity, suggests it is a grab-bag approach to fixing several critical problems at once and is leery of using propositions as legislative fixes for issues this critical.I may be leaning toward "yes", throwing caution to the wind regarding executive power in lieu of budgetary fixes. Will need to look at polling data - would rather it lose by a slim margin that pass.Prop 32 - No.SFBG is emphatic that this is a no vote, citing SuperPAC's bearing down on Unions. That's good enough for this liberal.

The measure presents itself as an even-handed effort to reduce political spending by both unions and corporations. "Prohibits unions from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. Applies same use prohibition to payroll deductions, if any, by corporations or government contractors," reads the official ballot summary.

But while payroll deductions are the main source of funding for labor unions — which use that money to advocate for the interests of their members and the broader working class — few corporations deduct money from their employee paychecks for political purposes. They tap the many other sources of funding at their disposal.

Similarly, the measure claims to ban "union and corporate contributions to candidates and their committees," yet it exempts many of the largest corporations from that restriction, allows even the corporations it does cover to bypass the restriction by forming super PACs, and it still allows corporate officers to funnel contributions to their favored candidates, making the corporate controls almost completely meaningless.

Prop 33 - No.Attempt to undo consumer protections of insurance rates couched in discount for continuous insurance subscribers. This is a cost-shifting measure that would impact a sizable portion of California insurance subscribers negatively and would effectively dismantle many consumer protections. Furthermore, it specifically would target infrequent drivers or people who have giving up insurance for long periods due to: alternative transportation, unemployment, illness, etc.Prop 34 - Yes.The death penalty is immoral and does not accomplish what it claims: deterrence.Furthermore, the death penalty is expensive. The prison system in general and death row specifically takes money out of the hands of teachers, emergency first responders, vital infrastructure projects and protecting the natural beauty of the great state of California.We're a first world state, why are we employing a third world, barbaric punishment?Prop 35 - No. "Tough on crime legislation" will further victimize sex workers.Be ware of any law purporting to be "tough on crime," they are either ineffectual, like our gun laws, or succeed in furtherance of injustice, incarceration, civil rights violations and misery toward minorities and the poor (the drug war, three strikes laws, harsh minimum sentencing guidelines). These are almost always election cycle show pieces ("look at how tough on crime I am! Re-elect me!") and they are usually more damning than helpful, if helpful at all.

Former Facebook executive Chris Kelly, mad that the state Legislature wouldn't pass a trafficking law to his liking and looking for an issue to run for office on, put up the money to place this mess on the ballot. It would rewrite the section in California's Penal Code that defines human trafficking, and impose harsher sentences on those found guilty. It requires that all those convicted of human trafficking — under an expanded definition that includes such non-sexual crimes as extortion — register on the sex offender registry, and that all registered sex offenders turn over their Internet usernames and passwords to the government.

Prop. 36 wouldn't repeal three strikes. It would simply require that the third strike offense be considered violent or serious. And it would provide a means for people currently serving ridiculously long sentences for relatively minor crimes to appeal and seek relief.

The state needs to raise funds for education, period, and will only be able to do that through a tax increase. The sliding scale starts at $7,300 a year (+0.4%, or about $30) and skews heavily toward a middle class tax burden, but is totally necessary.

Prop 39 - Yes.

Prop. 39 would change a loophole in the state's tax code that helps multistate businesses to avoid state taxes. In essence, the current law lets companies choose whether to base their state tax liability on in-state sales or a combination of sales, employment, and property. Companies with a lot of out-of-state employees are able to reap huge tax breaks — if anything the current law encourages outsourcing.

Prop 40 - Yes.

This referendum challenged the California Senate districts that were created early this year by the Citizen Redistricting Commission, an independent body that voters created as an alternative to the previous practice of letting politicians draw their own legislative districts after the decennial census. Those new districts aren't perfect — indeed, San Francisco was placed in a single Senate district instead of the pair we had — but the process that created them was widely lauded as "open, transparent, and nonpartisan," as the California Supreme Court ruled in rejecting a challenge to the districts. That ruling has caused the proponents of this measure — the side urging a "no" vote, which would invalidate the districts and let a judicial panel redraw them, whereas a "yes" vote upholds the existing districts — to drop their campaign and accept the commission's results. Vote yes.

30 September, 2012

"You know, I've been hearing that a lot," said the newly minted Detective First Class James Bradford Radcliff.

James set the moving box on his new desk. The box was branded on all sides by the moving company the city contracted. It was the type, used for small moves, with the elaborate folding diagram on the top for the morons who couldn't figure out how to fold a boxtop so it would close.

James allowed a brief flashback folding similar boxes while volunteering for his high school library. The boxes full of books that were to be thrown away.

Years later, in his 20s, restless and floundering, James drove a semi back and forth between Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico and Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All day he'd drive, punctuated by loading cardboard boxes onto and off his rig.

Occasionally he'd be put on a route to California - a task some might relish, but for James just another few torturous hours on the road. He was alone with the scenery day in and day out, the other cars mere objects to avoid. He started to resent the beauty of the landscape.

He kept a bottle of No-Doze in his glove box. He had tried some glass he had picked up in Scottsdale for a couple weeks, but it put him too much on edge. He liked cocaine, but he couldn't afford it or find it, moving from town to town.

The characters at the truck stops soured James on narcotics.

He quit after watching townies beat a cross dressing hustler almost to death.

Trailer park meth and sleazy bathroom hookups were part and, excuse the pun, parcel of the trucking trade. James wanted no part of it.

Luckily for him around the same time he had decided to leave the business he also knocked up his girlfriend Karen.

Can't be a husband and a father zipping back and forth across the country delivering bullshit for Lowes and Walmart.

"Bill Moyers and Kathleen Hall Jameson. Do they hump? I mean, the guy is solid liberal gold, right? He's unimpeachable. So... does he hunker down with Kathleen Hall Jameson, kiss her tenderly, and stick it in... Do they fuck?"

"Who the fuck is Kathleen Hall Jameson?"

Steve does another line. The snorting sounds as loud as God.

"She's a pundit... and intellectual, I think she's a professor, she's on Moyer's Journal all the time."

"Who is Moyers," says Steve with a sniffle.

Mike grabs the cocaine, laid out on a plastic faux ceramic tray, and cuts a huge line.

23 August, 2012

Administrivia: Will come back around and write up the outline/story board. The tough part will be finding James' voice, since I don't really know him that well - although I have some examples to guide me; it's hard to put myself in the head of someone who doesn't equivocate every decision and just "reacts" morally. This is the last Mike vignette until I get the housecleaning done on this story, but it came to me in the shower so I had to put it down.

Mike moved into a Victorian walk-up in late summer of 1997 on Lucky Street.

Mike was taking over Javier's room: a pantry with a painted concrete floor, the kind of room where you might keep a washer and a dryer, or store dry goods. There was no door, only a curtain that had been strung across the archway haphazardly.

Mike had arrived at night on the train with his only two possessions: a PC in a skeletal case, missing the outer covering (easier to pop cards in an out, or move devices around) and a duffel bag with his clothing and toiletries.

Javier was packing his stuff to leave, he'd be staying with (one of) his boyfriend(s) for a week then sneaking back to the Phillipines, his birthplace, the home of his mother and his one true love, Jorge. Javier and Jorge. How romantic?

Javier had to sneak because he was HIV+, and in 1997, the immigration embargo on the afflicted was still in effect. San Francisco had been the epicenter for AIDS/HIV in America for sometime, with it's cousin to a lesser degree in the East Village in New York, but attitudes were softening. However, it wasn't like things are today, and so Javier had to risk jail, or possibly worse, to reunite with his family and his lover.

Mike continued to think that was romantic even after, weeks later, his other roommate Nancy, a short, pixie-like dyke with large breasts and dinner plate eyes, told Mike that Javier was a liar and a coke head (worse, addicted to the then more obscure stimulant methamphetamine).

Despite the turmoil in both Javier's and Mike's lives on move-in night, the atmosphere was festive. Even though it was a Wednesday night, friends of the inhabitants of 45 Lucky gathered for drinks well into the night. Vodka poured, and alternating Prince, The Smiths, riot grrl punk and Duran Duran blared into the night as the city itself surged.

Mike sat on the mattress he inherited from Javier, drinking vodka cranberry and talking until late with Javier about his experiences as a person with the virus. Javier tolerated this precocious Mid-western boy's naïve questioning.

Mike never gave a second though about what may have happened on his
inherited mattress laid on cold concrete in that small, damp pantry. If
only...

Mike only saw Javier once again, a week later, as he came by to pick up a few remaining things, drop off money and fight with Nancy. Javier's tweaked excitement was jarring, and Nancy reacted with resignation and sadness through what must have been one hell of a hang over after another night of late night drinking.

That was the last Mike ever heard of Javier. Javier died in 2003 loaded with pills and rum, a penniless hustler, not far from 24th and Lucky.cop[7]

12 August, 2012

Pancho tucked their skateboards behind the service station while Yuri went behind the counter and poured "coffees" for the two of them - the coffee consisting of half actual coffee, at most, and half chicory. Joe was cheap, and chicory was a coffee substitute used in prison.

"If anyone asks, we've been here for hours," said Pancho, still panting.

Wanda looked on bemused. Mike sat at one end of the diner with a couple of friends. James and his girlfriend at the time sat at the other end. It was 1995.

Wanda was the unofficial late night den mother for all the wayward teens of Parkland Heights. She'd give out free coffee when they came in penniless, and often feed them if they looked starved (a lot of latchkey kids from lower income neighborhoods would come in late at night).

And if ever there was trouble, the kids in the neighborhood would get Wanda's back - more than one robbery attempt had been thwarted simply with cold looks from LSD crazed teenagers.

Sure enough, Parkland Heights police were not far behind Yuri and Pancho - who had "been there for hours" as everyone attested.

Officer John Blackman knew better, and took the two outside to the parking lot for a more thorough investigation.